‘What’s 25 kilos, isn’t that nothing?’

The Black Widow is his favorite. Fourteen-year-old Klaas-Jelle Romkes from Urk takes the box from the large pile of fireworks and opens the lid. He presses his fingers into the black plastic underneath. It snaps and large cardboard tubes emerge. “Look at those pipes! Yes, you don’t have that in the Netherlands,” he says. The Black Widow sprays the fireworks into the air with more force than the regular decorative fireworks box, he says. “It’s just genius.”

Then he takes a Solar Flare from the pile, a kind of fireworks volcano, and looks at it for a moment. “This stuff has been confiscated, so you have to leave it behind,” says a passing inspector in a fluorescent jacket from the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate (ILT). Dismayed, Romkes throws the box back on the pile.

He had just bought fireworks with his father in Germany when they ended up in an ILT fireworks inspection at the Dutch border, on the A1 near De Lutte in Overijssels. Here, in a kind of shed that is open on two sides, the Inspectorate checks Dutch vehicles coming from Germany on Friday morning. Dutch people like to buy fireworks in Germany, because they are cheaper there and because, among other things, firecrackers and flares are still allowed to be sold there, unlike in the Netherlands. The inspectors check whether people are not carrying illegal or rejected fireworks. If they are not sure whether the cargo contains fireworks, they first let the sniffer dog Luna smell it. When she sits down near a box, the inspectors know that it contains gunpowder.

The Inspectorate checks whether fireworks are permitted: this year it rejected a fifth of the decorative fireworks for consumers due to the noise level. The inspectors also check whether people are not carrying too many fireworks.

“You know that you are not allowed to take more than 25 kilos in the car,” said one of the inspectors when he opened the black Mercedes van of Klaas-Jelle’s father, Jelle-Meindert Romkes (43). The van was full of fireworks. Black boxes with purple and orange and inscriptions such as ‘FINAL COUNTDOWN’, ‘PARTY ONKEL’ and ‘FLOWERBOMBER’.

“What is 25 kilos, that is nothing,” says father Romkes. “I can’t make more of it,” answers the inspector.

The inspectors completely unload the van and place all the fireworks on a large scale in the warehouse: 98 kilograms, 99 kilograms, 99.4 kilograms – that is how much the father and son appear to have with them. Romkes looks relaxed. He is especially disappointed for “his little boy” who has been complaining all year that he wants to go to Germany for fireworks. Do they also have illegal fireworks with them? “Let me put it this way: mortar bombs are certainly not included,” says Romkes.

The fireworks are placed in a pile. Romkes has to be taken to a booth with windows where a report is drawn up. They are not allowed to take any of their fireworks home, not even legal ones. Before he gets back in, Romkes takes a look and whispers that he still has a few packages of flares for the car.

The other private individuals that the inspectors will check this Friday morning do not have to go to the booth. Some do have fireworks with them that they are not allowed to have with them, but these are always small quantities.

Mustachioed inspector Reinder Auwema picks through the fireworks package of a motorist who also had to open his tailgate for inspection. The catch: large firecrackers, firecrackers, Roman candles. “Not very exciting, but hey, it’s not allowed anymore. You can also get a fine if you drive 104 kilometers per hour, while you are allowed to do 100.”

The ILT does not make the large fireworks catches here at the border by stopping private individuals. She does this when checking traders. Earlier this month, the Inspectorate seized 1,700 kilos of fireworks from a sales point in North Brabant, and 18,000 kilos from a Dutch fireworks importer. In the run-up to New Year’s Eve, the ILT has now checked about thirty points of sale. And mail sorting centers are inspected all year round. So firecrackers ordered online can also be intercepted.

In the few weeks leading up to New Year’s Eve, the ILT is at a number of border crossings with Germany and Belgium, where it checks not only private individuals but also vans with fireworks intended for sales points in the Netherlands. Many fireworks warehouses are located in Germany. The point, says Auwema, is that the quantities and types of fireworks stated on the transporter’s form correspond with what has been declared “to the minister”. The inspectors check the latter in an Excel file on a laptop. Those two lists must also correspond with what they find on the bus.

This morning the Inspectorate discovered no major violations, but some carelessness. “I complimented a colleague of yours on how well secured he is, but you are not going to get that,” Auwema says sternly to a fireworks transporter whose van he is checking – outside the warehouse, because it has stopped raining for a while. It appears that the boxes of fireworks were thrown throughout the bus while driving. “Oh, okay, well, sorry,” says Jan Mulder (51).

Auwema also believes that the carrier was careless with the form: he only wrote down one point of sale, while he had to go to many addresses. But then Mulder can go.

A little later a man in a car cheerfully says that they won’t find anything with him. They are just a day late. Moreover, he does not understand that people transport German fireworks “over the main road”: “Then you know that as a Dutch person you will be taken away.”

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